ELI5: How did George W. Bush win a second term?

I am not American, so forgive me. All the Americans that I know (and I'm quite surrounded by them) don't seem to like what he did in office and seem to mock him. How on earth did he win that second term if he apparently did such a bad job during the first?

I would have to say you are surrounded by a group of Americans that aren't very diverse. Half of Americans have a favorable opinion of Bush right now.

In 2005 as the graph shows more than half had a favorable opinion of him so it shouldn't come as much of a surprise that he won. And as others have written it was a close race and Kerry put forth a terrible effort.

Also, in 5 years when we look at Obama there's a good chance that some will say how did they elect Obama in 2012? Most presidents, and Obama and Bush are no exception, lose a lot of popularity in their second terms so it's easy to forget why they were re-elected.

First you have to understand that America is extremely divided, with many people who will vote for the Republican ticket no matter what. These are probably not the people you associate with on a regular basis, but they most certainly exist. Presidential elections, therefore, are a battle for the people in the center who may be swayed either way and to energize the core base of voters.

Several things worked in Bush's favor in 2004. The first was the strength of incumbency. The sitting President running for reelection has significant advantages over his opponent, because he already has experience in office and can get his message out to the people easier through the State of the Union and other speeches.

Also, we were in the middle of two wars, and Bush convinced many voters that it would be a mistake to make major policy changes. Kerry was never able to put together a coherent war platform. In fact, he was an overall weak candidate who spent most of the campaign on the defensive and bored voters looking for someone more charismatic.

Of course, as with anything in politics, this isn't a simple answer. It's probably not something that can be done fairly, or accurately, while keeping with the idea of this subreddit.

The United States saw an enormous spike in patriotism and national pride after 9/11. This carried over into a large spike in approval for the job done by George W Bush. The effects of this were still visible in 2004 during the election campaign, as his approval ratings still showed in some months to be above 50%.

One other matter that may have been significant in his 2004 win was in the campaign executed by John Kerry. There are many theories as to what caused his campaign to feel so weak, a common claim for what may have been one of the deciding factors was in a series of attacks that were labeled the "Swift Boat" attacks. John Kerry was a Vietnam veteran, he had been awarded a few medals, including a purple heart, and during the time of the Vietnam war, he participated in a documentary that tried to discuss, and bring accountability to some of the less honorable actions the United States military had engaged in. Other controversies had been ignored or quickly dealt with and dropped, but this one was not dealt with or forgotten quickly, it was brought up quite a lot. Kerry's slow response to this attack is one of the most cited reasons for his loss, as the first and third presidential debates showed many people voting Kerry as the winner and the second debate was tied according to most sources.

Another point to mention is that many sources feel that Kerry was either just naturally unimpressive, or that most people had already made up their minds before he was even chosen as the candidate. John Kerry saw one of the smallest bumps in polling numbers after he became the official democratic candidate for the 2004 election in recent political history. A large portion of voters for John Kerry were essentially known as "Anybody but Bush" voters, that they would've voted for a potted plant rather than George W Bush for a second term, while this sounds positive, it's not, because you want people to care about the candidate, as it makes a very large difference in a long campaign if people can appreciate and talk about the positions of a candidate rather than a snide, almost childish comment of "Well at least he's not Bush." The statement "Well at least he's not ___" is not a very good way to get others to change their minds, and in a discussion between two sides with undecided voters listening from the sidelines, it doesn't work well.

TL;DR History on this one will be complicated, I'd say the largest causes, in order, would be John Kerry's poor response to the Swift Boat attacks, George Bush still pulling a lot of extra confidence/approval after the 9/11 attacks, and then finally the lackluster image that the "Anybody but Bush" voting crowd provided a candidate that was already seen as not very interesting.

Because hindsight is 20/20. It's easy enough to look back and disagree with some of his policies but things were different in 2004 when he was re-elected. 9/11 was still a recent memory and there had recently been a good deal of support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (remember that there was a lot of media coverage/propaganda suggesting that Saddam Hussein may have been building weapons of mass destruction). For all intents and purposes, Bush seemed to be doing a fairly good job.